In addition to the Goblins, we also had six Werewolves that I had stolen from the Burgundies. As there were both genders we could easily make an entire army of our own. The six of them maintained the pet status until they joined our faction and got a new one.
Due to constant fights, high mortality rates, and even extermination by the species, all mobs had developed reproductive organs, so, by the end of the week, two of the Werewolves were expecting.
It also turned out that the Werewolves could carry the Goblins. This gave Cap an idea to create a cavalry unit of Goblins armed with Scimitars and clad in chainmail. And although the Werewolves walked on their hind legs they had the ability to use all fours when running.
***
As for my own skills, there was a lot to think about and improve. The gained thirty-five levels gave a total of one hundred and forty skill points and a hefty amount of Evolution Points.I tried to improve the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin skill (really OP provided that you used Black Pilgrims). However, the System wasn’t that easy to manipulate: the skill cap was level thirty. Sure, the cooldown was significantly reduced and the duration of the skill increased, but still, an “ult” remained an “ult”: powerful, but rarely used. Improving my Demon path (which also had a level cap of thirty) didn’t help much. I could use the Rat-Catcher skill only in the most extreme cases. I didn’t want to be deprived of something so powerful when I needed it most.
With the remaining skill points, I improved some of the skills that I found quite useful during my time in this Game, in particular, the ability to further improve the Parasite path. Despite the fact that I was no longer a parasite, and was permanently settled in Leshy’s body, there were still benefits from this particular path of development. Of course, it was less effective now, but the result was the same.
I also leveled the Heir and Mental Mask skills as I had plans for them in the future.
So, when all was said and done, my character profile looked as follows:
Warlock
Level: 95
Faction: Gray
Specialization: Death Magic
❖ Spells: 2/3
❖ Rank: 2 [300/400]
HP: 450/880
Evolution Points: ~15,000
Physical Characteristics
Size: 12
Perception: 9
Stamina: 10
Damage Resistance: 5
Mental Strength: 19
Speed: 6
Damage: ~250
…
Available paths and skills
Unallocated Points: 0
Genus (faction skill), level 3
Heir (unique skill), level 36
[ESP] (unique, personal path), level 40
● Control (basic skill), level 22
● Mental Transmission (passive skill), level 14
● Evacuation (unique, class skill)
● Mental Defense (unique, class skill), level 20
● Mental Attack (unique, class skill), level 41
● Dark Manipulator (legendary skill), level 22
● Mental Mask (unique skill), level 25
[D. Mutation] (legendary path), level 19
● D. Peddler (basic skill), level 10
● D. Scout (level 10), skill from a new body
● D. Armor: level 7, skill from a new body
● Mutation Transmitter (sub-section of D. Mutation)
❖ Linguistics: level 9
❖ Third Eye: (legendary skill), level 17
[Parasite] (personal path), level 45
● Laboratory (basic skill available to all parasites)
● D. Augmentation: level 45
● Connection: level 17
[Demon] (path of the Piper), level 30
● Rat-Catcher of Hamelin (legendary skill), level 30
My size and other physical characteristics had seriously increased all thanks to snatching Leshy’s body. Mental Strength, in particular, was increased by having a more advanced brain, which I couldn’t have in the body of a Mosquito. The second brain hadn’t been installed as there was still the possibility of additional improvement of the main one. I could’ve technically tried to install another one, but it’d probably simply refuse to work.
All in all, the more I got used to being an attack unit rather than a support, the more I liked Leshy’s body. He had thought of everything, from proper balance between size and other physical characteristics, to mental block. Before he died, he was level sixty, but I got him to level ninety-five. There was definitely room for improvement.
First of all, I strengthened all the organs and systems to their max. I did the same to the bones by using the Iron Skeleton mod. After that, I went with Steel Ligaments, Strengthened Muscles, Smooth Step, and Clenched Fists. The last one increased the strength of the hands and made my grip deadly. I covered the Third Eye on my neck with a transparent shell similar to the one Greek had on his searchlight. After that, I extended my body and removed the third arm: without the wooly fur Leshy had before, it lost its element of surprise and only got in the way.
I couldn’t control the fur like Leshy did, nor use any of the combat skills that he had learned during his military career, nor did I perform as well in hand-to-hand combat as he did. These skills, as it turned out, were recorded in one’s brain and weren’t mods. So I turned out to be a worse fighter than Leshy; my path was that of mental manipulation, not brute force. However, I still planned to compensate for that by adopting a combat path of development that’d become available to me at level hundred.
Leshy’s long fur turned out to be a hindrance. Without the proper skills, it was just like a thick blanket that slowed me down, especially during swimming. I was reluctant to part with it at first since winter was approaching and it’d keep me warm, but I soon changed my mind when I began to get sidelong glances from my fellow teammates. I couldn’t blame them. Leshy’s face made them tense up on a subconscious level and made them feel like the traitor was still among them. And as much as I wanted to fix this, I couldn’t change my body as I had exited the parasite state. So I pondered about it for a while and came up with a solution: Snakeskin based on my original appearance.
After elongating Leshy’s body and changing the fur coat to snakeskin (which, after some improvements, felt as warm as the fur), I turned it into an enlarged copy of its original appearance. I was pleased with the changes.
***
After driving away the bison from the Mountain, we returned to the base where we came across Elf. Judging by the wild look in his eyes, reddened from lack of sleep, he had something very important to tell us...
Chapter 2
ELF’S FORECAST
Elf grabbed Amoeba and me and dragged us toward the central building — Pavel’s residence. The other players looked at the scientist in surprise, but only shrugged as if saying: “They’ll sort it out.” Elf was behaving rather strangely, much more than usual.
Amoeba and Elf rarely left the laboratory where they studied the new species of local flora and fauna. They slept four or five hours a day, and Elf’s food was brought to him by his assistants. It was no wonder he was on edge all the time.
Pavel, as the head of the faction, was interested in their research. But only in that which brought results. What was the use of numerous descriptions of all the types of species that could be found in the Game if your faction was getting exterminated by your neighbors? Because the two were taking their sweet time, Pavel grew more skeptical of their research every day.
However, according to Amoeba, he and his colleague were on to something... He didn’t really talk about his research with Elf but Valkyrie, with whom the biologist got quite close, who he told that the two were a step away from creating some sort of a drug and that their first experiments yielded unexpected results. Remembering AO-1, which deprived the players of their sanity, I was wary even though Elf had tested his creation on himself.
I was hoping he’d finally tell me more about his experiments. There must h
ave been a reason that he was so persistently dragging Amoeba and me away from everyone else.
***
The officials of the Grays were gathered at a simple table: Pavel, Cap, Korzh (in charge of production), Amoeba, Elf, and me, as the strongest mage in the faction. Next to each of us was a mug of herbal tea, from which we slowly sipped the tart-tasting drink.
Elf, whose left eyelid periodically twitched, and his whites seemed red from the lack of sleep, took a deep breath and began the meeting.
“Friends, me and my colleague,” he patted Amoeba on the shoulder (his hand went inside the jelly-like body, but neither didn’t seem to mind), “have studied several hundred species of plants and about seven dozen animals, and conducted a number of experiments... Technically speaking, the drug we’ve been working on has reached the ready for use stage. I call it The Third Sight! I was gonna go with ‘third eye,’ but that’d be copying Loki’s technique so I had to change the name.” He looked around. As no one seemed interested in the naming process, he continued. “The drug allows you to fall into a trance, in which you see various images... More precisely, prophetic dreams. We invented it a few days ago, but we had to test it before presenting it to you. I’m pleased to inform you that today’s fight between Loki and the bison leader confirmed our theories. Loki almost died! Like in my vision! Well, there he broke his sternum and the treatment took two days... But that’s all right. The margin of error is negligible.”
I almost choked on my tea.
“What? A broken sternum is negligible?!”
“No offense, my friend.” Elf seemed to realize only now that he had put me in great danger and didn’t even warn me about it. “What I did is terrible, I know! But Amoeba was there to cover you...”
“You, too, Amoeba?!” I gasped.
The biologist looked like he wanted to sink through the floor.
“L-Loki, it was for the sake of the experiment... Forgive us.”
“Fucking... Can’t believe you guys...” I mumbled to myself.
Cap laughed. His deep-throated voice echoed around the room, drawing in the rest of us. He was involuntarily supported by Korzh and Pavel. A timid smile appeared on Elf’s face. Amoeba’s gelatinous body shook with silent laughter. Yeah, our take on death had changed, and after a while, I also broke into a chuckle.
“All right!” Pavel said at last. “It’s good that everything ended well. So, what’s the conclusion?”
“Third Sight works! The visions do come true, which means that today’s one will also come true...”
***
After swallowing a ground mixture of herbs and what appeared to be the blood of some mob, Elf fell unconscious. This state lasted for about two minutes, during which time the chemist, who retained control of his mind thanks to the added maple root, even managed to get scared. The experiment would stray from the norm and end badly, he thought. But that wasn’t the case. Soon, a ray of light broke the haze and he realized that he was in space. Rather, in the upper atmosphere, he corrected himself, which was still a long way from space. Below him was the curved horizon of the planet, and the edge of the sun was slowly rising from behind it...
But he didn’t get to enjoy this view for long. An invisible force carried his consciousness down. Skirting the dense clouds and tearing through the sky, Elf raced toward the mainland visible between them. Stretching from north to south was a strip of land that contained all possible climate zones: from snowy wastelands to sandy deserts... Our faction was somewhere in the coniferous forests of the northern hemisphere.
It seemed to him that the Game’s planet was much smaller than Earth. So much so that it seemed that we could easily get to the forests, and then to the steppes that stretched far to the south of the Black Mountain.
But Elf didn’t admire this for long either. His consciousness went north. Soon, he passed through the coniferous forests and found himself in a tundra. White snow blinded him and the cold wind licked his face.
A message suddenly popped up in front of his eyes.
Cold Wave #1
Cold Wave #2
Looking into the distance, Elf gasped. There was fear in his eyes.
***
“What does that mean?” Cap asked.
“It means that the cold is moving toward us from the north. Wild frost. Where do you think all those mobs have been coming from? Why did the bison suddenly decide to move south? They were driven by winter. Such a winter that only polar bears and reindeer could survive it. This is gonna be the first snow we’ve had. Soon enough, we’re gonna be neck-deep in it. This isn’t just winter, but a test. Subzero conditions! It’s like the Game going: ‘You beat your neighbors, now try going up against Mother Nature.’ Who’s stronger, a human, or freezing temperatures?!” he practically shouted, jumping up from his seat and waving his arms.
Looking at his near-hysterical expression, no one had any doubts that the threat he was talking about was very much real.
“What do we do? We don’t have enough supplies, the cattle will die of cold and hunger, and we can’t just leave the base. Otherwise, we risk losing the Development Tree... However you look at it, we’re fucked.”
“Exactly,” Amoeba chimed in. “We need to... We need to complete the Game before this fucking thing comes! But how?”
Ha! Pass the Game! The hell do they think we’ve been doing till now? We got out of the primordial waters, killed the dominant species of this area, captured our neighbors’ bases... We ought to focus on further development...We need cars, trains, planes... modern tech... We’re not the first ones here. Everyone who got here before us went through the same shit... They fought for survival, killed one another, developed further... They probably did it differently than us, had different machines, weapons, perhaps even resources... But the goal was the same — survival.
But all that effort seemed to have been in vain as these people were simply erased by the System to make room for new races. The same happened to the Lilac Faction, the former inhabitants of the Mountain, whose mangled bodies once littered the floors of our current home.
So the question was — how to pass the Game?
Mind buzzing, I absentmindedly sipped my tea when a thought occurred to me.
“The key!”
The rest of the players at the table halted their heated argument and turned to me.
“What?” Amoeba asked.
“The key! The key to the door in the Hall!”
“What Hall?”
I looked at them and wanted to smack myself. After all I’ve been through, I forgot to tell them about what took place in the Mound of Memories, and the metal cube that had remained in Leshy’s third hand. Somehow, it got out of the fray intact even though the hand itself was covered with blisters and burns. I had removed the damaged limb and left the artifact in my cabin, completely forgetting about the lock and the Hall.
A couple of minutes later, the mentioned artifact was placed on the table in front of Pavel.
***
After listening to my confusing story, Pavel frowned and fell into deep thought. Meanwhile, the scientists bent over the artifact to study it.
“Looks like titanium... But I can’t tell for sure without the tools,” Elf muttered to himself.
“What strange patterns...” Korzh reflected. “As far as I know, such patterns aren’t characteristic of any culture we know.”
Cap chuckled.
“It’s clear that this key wasn’t made by human hands... And the door is actually a hatch! And don’t get me started about the statues and the Steel Giant... Why are things always so complicated?”
He was right. There were so many questions but not nearly enough answers. As usual, the System didn’t give us any explanations or hints. And why would it? We needed to figure this out for ourselves. I could’ve been wrong for all I knew and there could’ve been nothing in the Hall save for dust and darkness.
“So, the key...” Pavel finally spoke. “It’s odd, but it’s only a piece of t
he puzzle. It’s very big, almost three feet long... And since it’s only a part of the key, there must be more of them somewhere... But where? Also, how do we know that there’s anything under that hatch?”
A reasonable question, but I already had an argument ready.
“Well, the soul trapped in the Gray Pilgrim’s body said that we need to protect some ‘dungeon’... The Burgundies knew about the Giant, which, for some reason, is feared as if it’s a God or something... Everything’s connected! The Giant wants to go to this dungeon, which can be locked with this key we’re trying to piece together... Additionally, it’s not like we have any other options... If the Giant doesn’t kill us, the winter will.”
“Let’s do it like this,” Pavel said after a pause. “Fuck that Giant. We’ll postpone the search for the key for now. We have more pressing problems... Winter and the migrating mobs.”
He was interrupted by a message that flashed in front of the eyes of everyone present.
Caution, Gray Faction! The Steel Giant is coming for your souls.
The Black Mountain will soon shudder from its steps. There is not a lot of time left. Only the Dungeon God and the Cloud Elder can hide you. Open the door to Underworld or climb to Heaven. Otherwise, your corpses shall fertilize the spring’s crop.
Pavel’s face twisted in a grimace. Cap froze with his mug half-way to his mouth. Elf, who had jumped to his feet, slowly sank back into his chair.
“Loki, take your group and a couple of players of your choosing. I give you absolute freedom. Your task is to find the remaining fragments of the key and open the hatch in the Hall,” Pavel said softly, turning pale. He then turned to the others and addressed them in a stronger voice. “Do all you can to make sure that we’ll be safe from the frost and the Giant! Elf, Amoeba, try to invent some drug or medicine that’ll help strengthen our minds and bodies. Korzh?”
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 2